Utilizing the Internet as a marketing medium has rapidly evolved and has steadily become accepted by manufacturers and merchants. Internet advertising is now a multi-faceted activity that continues to progress towards a comprehensive mirroring of the multitude of traditional promotional, marketing and advertising channels that have been used by manufacturers and merchants.
The Internet delivers a wide variety of content formats on a number of protocol based platforms and is used in all facets of corporate, product and service marketing. Such protocols include but are not limited to “instant messaging” protocols and browser based protocols.
An Internet marketing area that is of particular interest and relevance to merchants and manufacturers in promoting their goods and services is the Internet search. The Internet search, as a marketing service, is based on manufacturers and merchants paying for listings or paying for an improved position in a results page of listings that are given to Internet Search Engine users. Search engines that search the entire Internet for results (‘whole internet search engines’) do not require manufacturers and merchants to pay for appearing in the results of a search. These search engines utilize algorithms to estimate the relevance between the search term entered by the user (‘keyword’) and any Internet content. The search results are delivered as a list of links to Internet pages, based on the ranking that each web page is given by the algorithm. Manufacturers and merchants typically have a web page, in order to appear in the search engine results.
Some manufacturers and merchants, who have web sites, engage the services of search engine marketing firms, who use knowledge of search engine algorithms to improve their clients' search engine ranking, with the intention of placing the manufacturer's or merchant's web page link closer to or at the top of the search results.
As a compliment to or alternative to whole internet search engines, marketing firms are able to place ‘sponsored’ or ‘featured’ placement service provided by whole internet search engines. These services allow manufacturers and merchants to purchase positions in the user's search results. These ‘featured’ or ‘sponsored’ listings are typically delivered in a ‘sponsored link’ or ‘featured listing’ portion of the search results page (typically placed at the top, bottom or right hand side of the search results page). These placements are made through algorithms that relate the user's keyword to the areas that are relevant to the manufacturer or merchant. Manufacturers and merchants may also purchase placements in searches for particular keywords.
Not all search engine marketing services are provided by whole internet search engines. Many search engine operators are selling a position in an internal database and delivering the results through the Internet. These search engines typically target a particular section of Internet users or users looking for a particular product or service (‘vertical search engines’).
Not all search engines that are not whole internet search engines are vertical search engines. The leading global search engines have released localized versions of their service, with algorithms that are focused on delivering search results based on proximity to the user. These local search engines use some form of geographic locator such as a map, zip code, latitude/longitude position or other geocode identifier to identify a user's location and then deliver information that identifies a group of merchants that are located within the selected local area. Typically, search results are delivered through plotting on a map interface, with associated links and ‘sponsored’ links listed above, below or beside the map graphic. These search engines compete with search engines services that are provided by Local Directory Services operators. Typically, local directory services search engine services deliver results through a combination of ‘sponsored’ link placements and general results for the market area. Some directory service operators' search engines provide users with a proximity search feature, which delivers results ranked on proximity to the user's inputted location.
Today, the Internet search generally only allows a user to search based on a keyword or a proximity axis. However, an Internet search usually does not allow a user to approach a search from multiple perspectives, while maintaining information across numerous search axes.
It is known and understood that consumers approach a purchase decision from a variety of perspectives. As a result, there has been need for the consumer/user:                to approach a purchase decision from a wide number of decision axes        to gather all or some of the available Internet content        to gather information in a variety of content formats        to gather all the information in a single Internet activity session.        
An example of an earlier technology to partially solve the above needs is described in Applicant's co-pending application (U.S. patent application 60/667,915 and corresponding PCT application (both incorporated herein by reference)). Applicant's co-pending application describes a system and method enabling the presentation of goods and services data (hereinafter “merchant information”) to a user where the merchant information is ordered in relevance based on the location of the user. In this system, a user seeking merchant information queries the system to locate relevant merchant information based on a user location determined either by the system or entered by the user. Upon being presented with a list of relevant merchant information, the user may then obtain additional information with respect to that merchant including a URL link to the merchant's website and/or driving directions, as may be requested.
While Applicant's co-pending system is highly effective in locating relevant merchant information, the presentation of the information, as with whole internet search engines, presents only a limited amount of information on which a user will base a decision to choose one path over another to obtain further information. In particular, Applicant's co-pending system does not readily enable a user to access relevant manufacturer information that may assist the user in locating the most relevant merchant for supplying a particular product or service.
For example, if a user has prior knowledge that they want information to direct them to the nearest shop selling televisions, the user may search for a known shop name referred to generically within this description as “Television Store”. “Television Store” may have numerous locations in a geographical area and the user may merely be seeking the nearest “Television Store” location. With the co-pending system, the user would search for “Television Store” and the system would return a list of the nearest “Television Store” locations based on their distances to the user. To a certain level, this can be extremely valuable information to a user and can greatly improve the efficiency of a search compared to previous technologies.
At another level, and in another search, the user may have less knowledge about the specific store they want to find and instead is seeking information about televisions in general, hoping to locate a number of stores that sell televisions. In this situation, the Applicant's co-pending system will present a number of different stores by name (ordered on the basis of proximity). By drilling down through the list of stores, with possible diversions to a specific store's listed website, the user may make a decision as to what store appears to be the most attractive to visit.
However, this searching methodology is somewhat inefficient for certain searches in that the quantity of information visually or graphically displayed to the user is limited and is generally presented in a non-graphical format. That is, at the primary search level, the user is presented only with text information relating distances, store names and addresses and it is only by actively selecting a listed store that additional information may be presented by opening a separate window for a separate website. Thus, pursuing a particular path may yield highly irrelevant information as the quantity of relevant information presented that suggests to a user to pursue one path is limited. That is, the user's selection of a particular path may be based solely on proximity leading to search results producing non-useful results if the nearest stores do not carry the desired products. Alternatively, a user's selection of a particular path may be based solely on a user's prior knowledge of known stores such that equally relevant paths are not pursued. Still further, opening and closing numerous websites is both time-consuming and confusing to a user and often leads to diversions that causes a user to give up on the initial search purpose.
Accordingly, there has been a need for a system that overcomes the preceding problems and provides more efficient and dynamic searching functions to users where the likelihood and speed by which a user obtains relevant information is increased. More specifically, there has been a need for a system that actively links the merchant data (i.e. the location of a merchant) with manufacturer data (i.e. the types of products that are sold by that merchant) wherein a user's interaction with one component of the system dynamically updates another component of the system with relevant information.